Scarlett Johansson: Beautiful girl, hideous voice

When I heard Scarlett Johanssen was making an album I was fairly indifferent about the whole thing. I honestly haven’t seen any of her movies but my understanding is she is a great actress. There are numerous movies of hers I want to see but just haven’t gotten around to because I busy watching all the horror I’ve missed lately. So when it was released last Tuesday I put it on my MP3 player. A song came up in as I listened on random, doing some paperwork and I was immediately like “Oh my god, that’s bad.” I looked at the name and was a bit surprised to see the cacophony was from this starlet.

Her voice literally sounds like she smoked six packs of Lucky’s, took some testosterone and completely eschewed the concepts of tone and melody before sitting in front of the studio microphone. Her voice always sounds like it’s deep, deep in the mix (which is probably merciful) but the mix is a creeping, almost creepy mix of banjos and synthesizers. It’s like listening to bluegrass after doing a bunch of downers. I realized there have been people out there able to make albums of worth without having a pitch perfect singing voice like Bob Dylan and Bjork but Scarlet Johansson is not one of them. The one positive point is that it takes guts to put out something this dismal. She didn’t purify and make her voice something its not. The concept of the album is basically her take on a bunch of Tom Waits tunes. I’m not a big fan of him either so maybe I’m a little biased but at least these are his songs so if he wants to sound like vocal gravel we have to respect that.

“Town With No Name” opens the album and its pretty depressing. The music is dreary and Johansson’s voice is even drearier as she drags and moans the vocals like a spectre from the grave. I can barely hear her voice its so low and she sinks into the abyss of the arrangement. “Falling Down” is a numbing, icy arrangement but its slightly better than the first track. The first one sounds like something you’d kill yourself too and this one sounds likes something where you would just entertain the idea. “Anywhere I Lay My Head” is another song that drones on and on and she sounds like she’s a little drunk. The weird arrangement doesn’t match her lackluster vocals with its canned bossa nova beat, gothic organs. It reminds me of something Sinead O’Connor would sing if she were tone deaf, drunk as a skunk and very bored.
“Song For Jo” is the only song on the album she had a hand in but its still dismal, bleak and creeks like a door that has no oil. I could do a track by track but frankly this album doesn’t merit the time. It’s dismal. It’s sonic sludge. It’s torture.

I wish I could say there is some redeeming moment in this whole mess of an album. Some of the orchestration borders on eerily beautiful but it’s all smoke and mirrors that dissipates once Johnasson’s plodding voice enters the mix. There are numerous other artists who are more talented than her that have faded into oblivion with far better albums. Remember Poe’s Haunted? Probably not, but you would do yourself a huge favor if you hunted that masterpiece down instead of slipping into the quicksand of this album. Every song on this album is complete and total life sucking slop and trudging through it makes me feel tired and irritated.